Bufo bufo

The common toad, also known as European toad or simply the toad in Anglophone parts of Europe, is a toad found throughout most of Europe, western North Asia and a small part of Northwest Africa. It belongs to a group of closely related species descended from a common ancestral line of toads and forming a species complex. The toad is an inconspicuous animal, usually lying hidden during the day. It becomes active at dusk, hunting the invertebrates on which it feeds at night. It moves with a slow, ungainly walk or by jumping short distances, and has greyish-brown skin covered with wart-like lumps.

Bufo bufo

Tythatguy1312 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
BufoPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Temnospondyli
Life habit
amphibiousPBDB, for Temnospondyli
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Temnospondyli
Environment
brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda

Time the record covers

At least 7.8 million years on record.

The record covers at least 7.9 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 8.725 Mya to 0 Mya.

Miocene — about 1 of 95 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 7 of 95 occurrencesPliocenePleistocene — about 81 of 95 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 6 of 95 occurrences8.9–8.6 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences8.6–8.3 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences8.3–8.0 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences8.0–7.7 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences5.5–5.2 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences5.2–4.9 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences4.9–4.6 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences4.6–4.3 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences4.3–4.0 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences4.0–3.7 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences3.7–3.4 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences3.4–3.1 Mya — about 1 occurrence3.1–2.8 Mya — about 1 occurrence2.8–2.5 Mya — about 2 occurrences2.5–2.2 Mya — about 4 occurrences2.2–1.8 Mya — about 4 occurrences1.8–1.5 Mya — about 4 occurrences1.5–1.2 Mya — about 4 occurrences1.2–922 ka Mya — about 4 occurrences922 ka–615 ka Mya — about 10 occurrences615 ka–308 ka Mya — about 15 occurrences308 ka–0 Mya — about 41 occurrences7.9 Mya11.7 ka9.2 Mya0 Mya

95 occurrences of Bufo bufo on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

95 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

2 formations

Unterer Travertin — 50.97°N, 11.35°EUnterer Travertin — 50.95°N, 11.38°ECromer Forest Bed — 52.94°N, 1.25°E

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The named rock units Bufo bufo has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 92 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Bufo bufo and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Bufo bufo and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

718 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 93 sites for Bufo bufo, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

30 references

Each of the 95 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 18 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content3

Picture of Bufo bufo

Credit
Tythatguy1312
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

CT scan

Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Specimen
Bufo bufo · L-LP

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itBufo through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)